The Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray (Part 2)

Faith Westman of Woodsville, NH called 911 to report a vehicle that had an accident near her home. I should mention here that nearly 2 feet of snow had fallen, though according to Sergeant Cecil Smith, who was the first officer to arrive on scene, there was no snow on the roadways. Faith said the vehicle looked like it was along the ditch. She initially said she saw a male inside the vehicle smoking a cigarette, but later modified her story, saying she wasn’t sure if the person was male or female.

I want to point out that the timeline has been scrutinized over the years, down to the minutes, so while trying to be as accurate as possible, outside of being there when it all took place, there is an amount of variation that exists with it.
Approx. 7:33pm, a local bus driver, Butch Atwood, driving along Rt. 112 comes upon the accident scene and stops to offer assistance to Maura. He says he didn’t see any blood and that she didn’t seem injured. He did say that she appeared cold and shivering. During newspaper and media interviews he described Maura as having difficulty standing and that she had to lean on her car to hold herself up. He described the car’s lights as being off, and suggested she turn them on, to alert other drivers who might be traveling on 112, so they didn’t come around the curve and strike her vehicle. Butch asked her if she wanted him to call the police, but according to him she practically pleaded with him not to, and that she had already called AAA to come out. Although he didn’t question it, Butch knew this was a lie b/c there is no cell service in this area of Haverhill. He also said that his house was about 75 yards down the road, and offered to take her there so she could use his home phone, but again Maura refused.

I want to mention, there was another couple who lived near the accident scene, Virginia & John Marrotte, who also from their home saw Maura’s car while looking out their kitchen window. They said her hazards lights were on, and saw someone walking around the car. They said they saw Butch pull up at the scene. Hazard lights on at this time is contradictory to Butch’s statement.
After leaving the scene, Butch backed the school bus into his driveway, went inside his house, told his wife what had happened and called the police to report the accident anyway. Perhaps due to weather or busy phone circuits, Butch had difficulty getting ahold of someone at the Haverhill PD, but eventually got thru at 7:43pm.
At 7:46pm, Sergeant Cecil Smith arrived on scene. Not because it took him only 3 mins to get there after Butch Atwood’s call, but because he was dispatched to the scene at 7:29pm, after Faith Westman’s call to 911. After surveying the scene, he saw the black, 1996 Saturn, with airbags deployed, a spidering crack in the driver’s side windshield, scattered alcohol bottles, some red liquor on the driver’s side door, the ceiling of the vehicle, and also on the road just outside the driver’s side of the car. (The red drink was later determined to have been inside a coke bottle and smelled of alcohol.)

Items Found in Maura’s Car:

Alcohol: an empty beer bottle and a damaged box of red wine which had been previously opened (Tab 1 was missing from the box, Tab 2 was still intact)
AAA card issued to Maura
Blank accident reporting forms (presumably to detail the events from her prior accident in her father’s Toyota)
Black leather gloves (4)
Makeup
Diamond jewelry
CD’s
A book about mountain climbing in the White Mountains (her presumed destination)
2 sets of driving directions printed from MapQuest (1 for Burlington, VT and the other for Stowe, VT)
College textbooks
Birth control pills, some used
Sleeping pills, reportedly Tylenol PM
Maura’s favorite stuffed animal, a monkey
The book “Not Without Peril” about hiking in the White Mountains, given to her by Billy
Suitcase filled with clothes
Diet Coke bottle reportedly containing red wine

Items Missing from Maura’s Car (that we know of):

Despite everything else Sgt. Smith saw at the scene, there is one thing, or person he didn’t…and that was the 20 year old, female, with short hair, dark jeans, and dark coat. Maura Murray was gone.So was her wallet, debit card, credit card, and cell phone.
Smith then left the scene to talk with Butch Atwood about what he saw, and informed him there was no one at the scene as reported. They both went out and did a preliminary search for Maura, but did not locate her. EMS and Fire arrived on scene about 10 minutes after Sgt. Smith. A NH State Trooper, John Monaghan, also arrived on scene after Sgt, Smith, but he only drove around to search, and didn’t turn in his incident report until 10 days later.
No footprints in the woods near the scene, so if she walked away from the scene it would have been along the roadways, which were cleared.
At approx. 8:49pm, Maura’s car was towed from the scene.
A local APB went out at noon the next day, and it wasn’t until 5:17pm, Tuesday, Feb. 10th that she was even considered a missing person.
Dogs were brought in to track the scent of Maura. They were able to track her scent from where her vehicle was located to 100 yards east of the scene, where it seems to end.

According to InstantCheckMate.com:

A K-9 dog’s sense of smell is at minimum 10,000 times more acute than that of a human. To put that into perspective, I think we can all agree we know the smell of a cup of coffee. But could you smell a packet or teaspoon of sugar in it? Even if you could, I bet you couldn’t smell that same sugar packet in a million gallons of water. A trained search K-9 could.
A trained K-9 cadaver dog can smell a buried body up to 12 feet underground. So if you are going to bury a bury, you’re gonna have to dig REAL deep!
The Greeks, Persians, Babylonians, And Assyrians Were The First Cultures To Use Dogs For Policing.
Police Dogs Were First Used In 1907 In New York City. The first unit was called, Patrol Squad 1.
German Shepherds are the most popular breed of dog used as a K-9.
A K-9’s average career is 6-8 years. When they retire they remain with their police handler, as they are bonded.
When SAR dogs were used to search the Towers after 9/11, many of them became depressed, b/c they are rewarded when they find a survivor, but b/c there were not many survivors found, not only were they not rewarded, but the smell of death was so overwhelming, that many of them never worked search & rescue again.

FBI was called in 10 days after the disappearance and it became a nationwide search. The New Hampshire Fish and Game were also brought in 10 days later to conduct ground and air searches using a helicopter equipped with a thermal imaging camera. Maura was nowhere to be found.
The Murrays, especially Fred Murray was very critical of the time it took for police to react, treat Maura as a missing person, and their delay in bringing in the FBI to assist in the investigation.

*****END OF PART TWO*****

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